At the Chrysanthemum Hotel...

... come in, luxuriate, sprawl about, and tell me everything...

"The French government has dropped its public support for Roman Polanski, saying the 76-year-old director 'is neither above nor beneath the law.'"

"The move follows a backlash against a campaign for Polanski's release, with several leading European politicians and cultural figures refusing to join."

"Folks at the Wisconsin Tourism Federation couldn't possibly have seen how the Internet would change the lingo when it was established in 1979...."

WTF? Stop laughing at Wisconsin!

Why slam those of us with great health care benefits? We worked for it. We earned it. And we're the middle-class people Obama said he wasn't going to hurt.

Mickey Kaus writes:

Charles Lane argues that unions are now a "significant" impediment to "sensible health care reform" because of their tooth-and-nail fight against taxing "Cadillac" health plans. ... Even if you think (as I do) that the unions have a point when they argue they gave up wage increases in order to get lavish health benefits, isn't the answer to give them five years (or until their next contract negotiation) to rebalance the mix to what it would be in a world in which employer health benefits didn't go untaxed? ... If the problem for powerful unions is they no longer have quite the clout they used to have to extract wage increases in exchange for giving up "luxury" health benefits ... well, that's their problem. ...

But if we with the "Cadillac" health plans have to start paying taxes on our benefits, that's a huge middle class tax increase, and we were promised that wouldn't happen. Rebalancing the pay package doesn't save us from that tax hit — even assuming our employers would reshuffle things. Plus we love our great health benefits, and we were told if we liked them, we'd get to keep them. How is it fair to change the rules on us after we worked so hard to get what we have? The Democrats, including Obama, got elected by saying "middle class" over and over again. They never said they were going to provide for the less fortunate at our expense, and I don't see how they would have gotten elected if they had.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ari Tai said:

They could go the other direction, a 100% tax deduction for all medical expenses (including insurance payments).

Yes, that would be appropriate. In fact, why not just do that and forget all the other chaotic changes? See how that works out.

Guns and federalism!

Cert. grant!

Gore Vidal turns against — among other things — Barack Obama.

The Times of London asked how he thought Obama was doing:

“Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time. But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.” America should leave Afghanistan, he says. “We’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it.” The “War on Terror” was “made up”, Vidal says. “The whole thing was PR, just like ‘weapons of mass destruction’....

Vidal originally became pro-Obama because he grew up in “a black city” (meaning Washington), as well as being impressed by Obama’s intelligence. “But he believes the generals. Even Bush knew the way to win a general was to give him another star. Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not, they’re fascists.”

Another notable Obama mis-step has been on healthcare reform. “He f***ed it up. I don’t know how because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.” As for his wider vision: “Maybe he doesn’t have one, not to imply he is a fraud. He loves quoting Lincoln and there’s a great Lincoln quote from a letter he wrote to one of his generals in the South after the Civil War. ‘I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it’. That’s what Obama needs — a bit of Lincoln’s chill.” Has he met Obama? “No,” he says quietly, “I’ve had my time with presidents.” Vidal raises his fingers to signify a gun and mutters: “Bang bang.” He is referring to the possibility of Obama being assassinated. “Just a mysterious lone gunman lurking in the shadows of the capital,” he says in a wry, dreamy way.

Today religious mania has infected the political bloodstream and America has become corrosively isolationist, he says. “Ask an American what they know about Sweden and they’d say ‘They live well but they’re all alcoholics’. In fact a Scandinavian system could have benefited us many times over.” Instead, America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.”

Presented without comment. Say what you will.

I have a shred of sympathy for the Hollywood celebrities who defend Roman Polanski.

I think these people are not really very politically savvy, though they want to look engaged and good. They're surrounded by people who tell them what views to reflect and they got a clear message that made them think this was another easy one. And now, the backlash comes. Oh, poor celebrities! They just tried to say what their all-encompassing environment made them feel was good to say. Have a little compassion. It's not like they raped a kid.

***

Here's the NYT editorial:

From across Europe, nearly 100 representatives of the entertainment industry, including Pedro Almodóvar and Wim Wenders, signed a petition declaring themselves “dismayed” by the arrest, especially since it happened at the time of the Zurich Film Festival....

In Europe, the prevailing mood — at least among those with access to the news media — seemed to be that Mr. Polanski has already “atoned for the sins of his young years,” as Jacek Bromski, the chief of the Polish Filmmakers Association, put it.

We disagree strongly, and we were glad to see other prominent Europeans beginning to point out that this case has nothing to do with Mr. Polanski’s work or his age. It is about an adult preying on a child. Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty to that crime and must account for it.

Wow... atoned for the sins of his young years. Polanski was 44 when he raped the 13-year-old girl. 44! Young years! What a long long time some people would give men to run wild!

Sarah Palin's book is called "Going Rogue."

Why "rogue" and not "maverick"? "Maverick," of course, was John McCain's word, which Palin adopted and used in her speeches as she ran alongside him.

Here's a dictionary definition for "maverick":

1 : an unbranded range animal; especially : a motherless calf
2 : an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party

Here's a dictionary definition for "rogue":

1 : vagrant, tramp
2 : a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel
3 : a mischievous person : scamp
4 : a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave
5 : an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

"Rogue" has way more negative meanings in the dictionary, but "maverick" is the word long applied to John McCain, and for Palin, it can't signify her independence properly. Both words are applied to animals, and here the difference is good for Palin. The maverick animal is unbranded or motherless — unowned. This is a fate that falls upon the poor creature. The "rogue" is specifically a horse that resists being controlled by others. It is exhibiting its own will, and not the victim of happenstance. Now, fate touched Palin when McCain choose her, and she did get into trouble when she exhibited will, and the maverick's people called her "rogue":

The title of Palin's book is apparently a reference to stories that came out before Election Day that advisors to GOP Presidential Nominee John McCain felt Palin was "going rogue" and not following the advice and message of those running the campaign.

The idea of misbehaving works particularly well for a woman, especially a woman setting herself apart from the men. If we speak of a man misbehaving — being a rogue — we think of him straying sexually. But a misbehaving women — in my book — sounds like a great feminist: someone who thumbs her nose at the patriarchy.

And then there's Rogue, the X-Men character — "The more Rogue used her mutant power, the more her mind became filled with fragmentary psychic echoes of the people she absorbed." So the title is going to have a completely different feeling to the millions of people who know the word from the comics.

***

You can help support this blog if you use this link to buy "Going Rogue."

Inwood on Inwood.

Longtime commenter Inwood comments on last weekend's post about Inwood. 

"All that's left, then, is that he's been extraordinarily burdened by traumatic deaths in his family."

"You could say the same of Vice President Joe Biden, but I don't think anyone wants to give him license to go on a crime spree."

A 14-year-old girl died a few hours after getting the cervical cancer vaccine.

"The virus is often transmitted through sexual intercourse and authorities wanted to give the vaccine to girls as young as 13 so they are protected by the time they become sexually active."

Isn't it strange how we are completely outraged by a man having sex with a 13-year-old girl and at the same time we've given up on keeping 13-year-old girls from having sex?

Cervical cancer is a serious disease, but it's not something that suddenly strikes children like polio or whooping cough. There is some conscious mind involved in the decision to have sexual intercourse. Why must the vaccine be foisted at such an early age on girls who might prefer to avoid sexual intercourse with multiple partners, at least until they are older, and who can make a decision when they are 18 whether they want the vaccine or the risk of cancer? I don't see the justification for treating young girls this way.

"One female UW-Madison student spoke out and said that by renovating the park, the homeless would be driven out, no help would be provided to them and they would have nowhere else to go."

Why, in a city the size of Madison, which has numerous parks of all sizes, is a tiny little park on the most important commercial street downtown, the only place for homeless people to go?

The student also said she feared that if an ATM were installed in the proposed visitors center, which is part of the plan, then the homeless would be forced to panhandle farther away from the park because of a law prohibiting panhandling within a certain distance of an ATM.

So there you have it. "Go" means panhandle. The student is sympathetic with the people who want to panhandle, and presumably they like to be on a street that is teeming with pedestrians — which State Street is because of all the hard work and money business people have put into the shops and restaurants. State Street, I'd say, is one of the best places in the world for pedestrians, and yet you cannot walk down the street — unless you strategically switch sides along the way – without being asked for money by a man shaking a cup. Now, many, many students, especially the young ladies, are soft-hearted. They'll put dollars into those cups. Lord knows why students have that much money — and why they're not analytical enough to see that it would do more good to spend whatever extra cash they might have in one of the stores or cafés.

ADDED: Before you call me a sexist, let me add that "especially the young ladies" is based on years of observation of who gives money to the panhandlers on State Street. I am projecting a reason why people give money to panhandlers. I tend to think that it is soft-heartedness that moves people — of either sex — to give money to panhandlers. It's simple, spontaneous charity that is disaggregated from any larger economic or moral analysis. It could also be feelings of guilt or shame or a desire to please God or out of rebellion against parents who've told them not to give money to panhandlers — parents or other authority figure, such as law professors.

Now, it's time to curl up together in the Orange and Black Inn.

Sleep tight.



Mmm mmm mmm. Like Halloween candy, no?

It's good to know that fighting to win is something Obama passionately believes in.

Michelle Obama:

First lady Michelle Obama vowed Monday to "take no prisoners" as she and her husband launch an unprecedented bid for Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid....

"It's a battle -- we're going to win -- take no prisoners," the first lady said with a smile at a roundtable discussion with reporters in the White House State Dining Room....

On another front, asked to "define victory in Afghanistan," Barack Obama famously said:

I'm always worried about using the word "victory" because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

(Emperor Hirohito came down?)

The Philosopher's Petition: "Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison."

Begins French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who is collecting the signatures of "writers and artists." I put "writers and artists" in quotes, because the list includes, presumably as "artists," at least one actor and one fashion designer. If "artists" is a comprehensive term, why aren't writers "artists"? But I delay. On with the rest of the petition:

He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago...

And he fled! That's why time has passed. He's avoided the jurisdiction. It's not as if prosecutors let the case go stale.

...and whose principal plaintiff...

Plaintiff! You might talk like that in France, but here in America, that's the language of torts. And we are talking about crime.

... repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings.

And how much money was she paid to settle the case? What were the terms of the settlement? Do you approve — as a general rule to be applied to all — of dropping criminal charges whenever the victim has been moved to closure?  It is the nature of criminal law that it is a crime against the people, and not merely a wrong against the victim. Do you argue against that, philosopher? Why? Give reasons! Your assertions are not enough — philosopher.

Seventy-six years old...

Yes, he's that old because he fled and because he was protected in other countries that apparently did not take rape so seriously, at least not when it was committed by a great artist.

... a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland...

If a life of suffering excuses crimes, many, maybe most, of our criminals would escape prison. Wouldn't the Nazis themselves have cried about their own suffering in the years preceding their rise to power? Philosopher, do you approve — as a general rule to be applied to all — that those who have suffered earlier in their lives should not be punished for the serious, violent crimes that they commit? Explain, in abstract terms that meet the standards of the discipline of philosophy, why you think this is so.

Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.

We have statutes of limitations here in America too. Do yours absolve fugitives? Philosopher, do you absolve fugitives who succeed in evading capture while a period of years passes? Would you do that for everyone? For Nazis? Explain your reasons in terms that meet the standards of the discipline of philosophy, so we can judge.

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

Do you assert that an artist ought to receive special treatment? Would an ingenious Nazi deserve to live out his life in peace? What does the special treatment of artists have to do with democracy? Explain what ingeniousness, filmmaking, and democracy have to do with your proposed rule.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, you present yourself as a philosopher. I would like to honor philosophy. Back up your petition with a philosophical argument that we can understand and critique.

IN THE COMMENTS: Peter Hoh said:

So in Bernard-Henri Lévy's world, there are common terrorists. One must presume that some other terrorists are uncommon. Perhaps some are extraordinary. I wonder how one can tell the difference?

Surely, the 9/11 attacks were uncommon. In fact, they were ingenious.

Let's not forget what the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen said on September 17, 2001:

... Stockhausen...  called the attack on the World Trade Center ''the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.'' Extending the analogy, he spoke of human minds achieving ''something in one act'' that ''we couldn't even dream of in music,'' in which ''people practice like crazy for 10 years, totally fanatically, for a concert, and then die.'' Just imagine, he added: ''You have people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5,000 people are dispatched into eternity, in a single moment. I couldn't do that. In comparison with that, we're nothing as composers.''

So, Bernard-Henri Lévy, by your standard, we should leave Osama Bin Laden alone?

"Creepy Ad Watch"?

That's what Andrew Sullivan calls this. I disagree.



I think it's totally clear and effective. It's not too scary. It's engaging and memorable. Don't knock the PSA. I mean, go ahead and laugh if you're beyond the age when you need this kind of help, but the only thing that makes this creepy is that you know there really are people who would trick kids this way.

ADDED: Here's a different approach:

At the Polka Dot Café...

... think what you like.

"I winced when I saw the wooden railroad plank being smacked against Derrion Albert’s head."

"My stomach turned when I saw the five other young black men stomp on Albert. By the end, my eyes welled up with tears when I realized what I saw: A 16-year-old child beat to death. No doubt it was difficult for me to get through the entire 2:27 of footage, even with parts blurred out, and I’m sure it will be difficult for others to watch as well, but the fact remains: We need to watch. We need to watch and not turn away because as history has taught us, it’s the only way we’re going to learn."

I don't believe it’s the only way. Go ahead and look if that's what you think you need to care. But how can you not already understand that other people are real?

Back in the 1960s, we only needed to see footage of black protesters being beaten, hosed down and attacked by police dogs once to understand how bad racism was down South.

That's a different use of "only." It is enough to see pictures sometimes (though pictures, even moving pictures, can deceive).  But that doesn't mean that pictures are the only way to learn what evil is, what suffering is. And we fall short if only pictures work for us. Indeed, we are open to manipulation if that is our sole method of learning.

I'm reminded of words from another context:

"Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

"Sadly, Nancy."

The closing on an email that reads:

I so love reading your blog, and often so love reading the lively comments. But then there are the times when reading the comments that I feel like I am looking into an unflushed toilet. Does it have to be this way?

Yes, change has come.

We have been changed into creepy automatons.



All hail, education.

Senator ACORN.

"Franken won by 312 votes. ACORN claimed to have registered 48,000 new Minnesota voters. If just 1% were ineligible but cast ballots, or had ballots cast for them illegally, and survived the recount process ... that's 480 votes, almost certainly overwhelmingly cast for Franken. ..."

Mind if I quote Rush Limbaugh again?

I was just listening to the podcast of yesterday's show, and this just jumped out at me:

I'm confident that America has not changed as Obama believes it has or wants to make it change, and that this can be beat back. If I didn't think that, I'd chuck it. And I'd spend the rest of my days making sure the last check I wrote bounced.

He emits an enigmatic chuckle at this point. It seemed to mean ah, how well I know myself... or perhaps just I'm so funny... or maybe death, it comes for us all....

Dialogue about struggling with clamshell packaging: "It was entombed!" "Just get a box cutter!" “What am I, Mohammed Atta, I gotta get a box cutter?”

9/11 humor — in with the (profuse) blow job jokes on "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Are we okay with this... now, after 8 years? I must admit, I laughed a lot.

Are Hollywood types defending Roman Polanski because they love him as a fellow artist or because of their own pedophilia?

Allahpundit trashes the Hollywood crowd for rushing to the defense of Roman Polanski.

Magically transformed, by Hollywood libertinism and douchebaggery, into an honest-to-goodness victim who’s being persecuted by the evil empire for, um, forcibly sodomizing a 13-year-old and then skipping bail.... ... Polanski and his cretinous supporters don’t care if he’s guilty or not. They want him to walk free, in the name of “art,” without another word spoken on the subject.

Is it just art, or is there a particular love in Hollywood film art of the forbidden love between the adult and child?

I thought I saw a pedophilia trend in the most honored films of 2008. I talked about that in this blog post...

I'm seeing all the well-reviewed year-end movies, and there's an awful lot of wrong-age sex. "Doubt" is about a priest accused of molesting children. "Benjamin Button," with its backwards aging character, had scenes of an old man in love with a young girl and an old woman in love with a toddler. "The Reader" had a 36-year-old woman seducing a 15-year-old boy. "Milk" had a man in his 40s pursuing relationships with much younger (and more fragile) men. "Slumdog Millionaire" shows a young teenage girl being sold for sex. I say that Hollywood is delivering pedophiliac titillation with the deniability of artistic pretension.

... and in this Bloggingheads with Glenn Loury:



Think about it.

Richard Cohen says "Let Polanski Go — But First Let Me At Him."

Absurd macho posturing from the liberal (?) columnist:

It’s alright with me if Roman Polanski is freed by the Swiss authorities who have detained him at the request of the United States -- if first I get a chance to bust him one in the mouth....

Ugh. This is on the level of hoping someone sent to prison gets raped. You think it's cute to flaunt your violent fantasies? I'll bet that elsewhere this guy acts as if it's important to follow the law, yet he loves the idea of punishment without due process whenever it jibes with the ebb and flow of his emotions.

I'll bet he's opposed to torture, yet he's in love with the idea of hurting someone as a way to express outrage. I'll bet he thinks that the locution "bust him one in the mouth" makes it man-to-man and somehow okay. Indeed, it's perfectly apt... to punch a 76-year-old man in the face.

Such is the fantasy of an aging major-media male opinionator. Look, either Polanski deserves to be put in prison or he does not. Take a position. Your fantasy is of committing a crime for which you would deserve to be put in prison. Yes, yes, of course, you'd never do it. Which is why you are a big hypocritical pussy.

***

This post is about the Washington Post Richard Cohen, not my ex-husband Richard Cohen. Around here, the WaPo Richard Cohen is called Richard Hasn't-Slept-With-Althouse Cohen.)

"Cocoon, the fish and meat maker, is the winner of the Electrolux Design Lab 2009 competition."

"The appliance will supposedly grow meat and fish from prepackaged 'genetically modified' meat and fish.... Apparently the genetically modified prepackaged food, can be 'grown' in the cocoon during cooking, like microwave popcorn.  The process isn’t like the food generators on Star Trek. It doesn’t create food out of thin air, nor will it clone food from natural fish and meat sources.  If it isn’t the genetically modified meat or fish, you can’t grow it."

You can't actually buy the Cocoon yet. But would you want one? ("Cocoon" suggests we're going to be eating insects!)

It reminds me of "Chicken Little" — "a huge mass of cultured chicken breast, was kept alive by algae skimmed by nearly-slave labor from multistory towers of ponds surrounded by mirrors to focus the sunlight onto the ponds" in "The Space Merchants," by Frederik Pohl (w/CM Kornbluth). Here's the description in the book:

Scum-skimming wasn't hard to learn. You got up at dawn. You gulped a breakfast sliced not long ago from Chicken Little and washed it down with Coffiest. You put on your coveralls and took the cargo net up to your tier. In blazing noon from sunrise to sunset you walked your acres of shallow tanks crusted with algae. If you walked slowly, every thirty seconds or so you spotted a patch at maturity, bursting with yummy carbohydrates. You skimmed the patch with your skimmer and slung it down the well, where it would be baled, or processed into glucose to feed Chicken Little, who would be sliced and packed to feed people from Baffinland to Little America.

And click on this link for a nice list of food in science fiction, with clickable details. You mayb be interested in the Butcher Plant, Carniculture Vat, ChickieNobs, Pseudoflesh, the Yeast-Beast Machine, etc. etc.

For some reason, people are interested in what Andy Williams thinks.

This story — "Andy Williams accuses Barack Obama of following Marxist theory" — is featured at Memeorandum and Drudge. Andy Williams is an 81-year-old singer. Here's what he was like in 1966:



In case you weren't around then and can't quite figure it out, let me assure you that this sort of thing was disturbingly square at the time. I'm laughing at it now, but I remember that back then, it would actually make me angry.

No one in the 60s, when he was popular in some quarters, would have cared what Andy Williams thought about politics. I can't imagine why anyone cares now. Really, that linked story looked like it belonged in The Onion.

Deliberate eggcorns.

Hey, I got linked by Language Log! I wish I could produce what has been identified as a variation on an eggcorn to celebrate the occasion.

IN THE COMMENTS: XWL fulfilled my wish:

Congratulations, you got Lincoln Logged!

(an eggcorn for "linked on log")

(it's a stretch, but I used to like those things)

At the Waterlily Café...

... you can rise above the petty worries of a Monday afternoon.

I miss Carl Sagan.

I miss Carl Sagan. I miss Carl Sagan.

***

For one thing, I don't see Tyson writing something like this:

There is a very nice self-titering aspect to cannabis. Each puff is a very small dose; the time lag between inhaling a puff and sensing its effect is small; and there is no desire for more after the high is there. I think the ratio, R, of the time to sense the dose taken to the time required to take an excessive dose is an important quantity. R is very large for LSD (which I've never taken) and reasonably short for cannabis. Small values of R should be one measure of the safety of psychedelic drugs. When cannabis is legalized, I hope to see this ratio as one of he parameters printed on the pack. I hope that time isn't too distant; the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

(Read the whole thing — and don't assume I'm endorsing it. I'm not.)

***

Oh my God, Becky
Look at his cerebellum, it is so big!...

"Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected...."

"The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words 'I' and 'my.' (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story."

The mainstreamers are starting to regret the way they led the poor man on.

Proposal for a new kind of slang following the pattern "metal fork" for "metaphor."

The idea is to replace boring abstract words with very specific concrete things that sound pretty close to the original word. I'd like to build on the single example of "metal fork" for "metaphor."

This idea is based on a recent mishearing. Did I hear "metaphor" and think I heard "metal fork" or was it the other way around? If you want the answer to that question, imagine the breakfast table conversations chez Meadhouse and cull through all the many things that have been discussed on this blog since last January.

Midmorning repose.

Anne Applebaum says: Roman Polanski "did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways..."

"... In notoriety, in lawyers' fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film."

What she doesn't say:

Applebaum failed to mention that her husband is a Polish foreign minister who is lobbying for Polanski’s case to be dismissed....

Incredible! We're talking about a Washington Post columnist here, who used the corporate pages to write a piece decrying "The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski."

But is that any more absurd than saying he's suffered enough because of all the burdens on his career? Think what this means, generalizing the opinion into an abstract rule. It means that those with high professional standing do not need the usual criminal punishments given to individuals who have very little in this world. Ordinary people must be punished in prison, but big shots are already punished heavily by the mere revelation of their crimes and therefore should be relieved of much or all of the usual prison sentence. Care to sign on to that rule? 

IN THE COMMENTS: Mortimer Brezny says:

I used to agree with Ann that punishment ought to be equal. But then I realized that sympathy is unequal. If you are poor, you are pitied. If you are rich, you are not. No matter if you were born poor and worked diligently over years to build a business that provides you with your present level of wealth. No matter if you were born rich and worked hard to sustain and grow the wealth with which you started. This imbalance, of course, leads to an unfair resentment and hatred of the rich. The poor can get away with all sorts of horrors against the rich and the successful, the talented and the intelligent, and when the favored sons strike back, they are chastened. That is wrong. Equal means equal. If the rich are to be despised and the poor are able to strike them on a daily basis in innumerable ways, then the rich ought to be able to strike back. And the punishments should reflect the toll of the daily indignities. I say punish the poor even worse. Make them suffer for their petty hatred of the rich, for their nasty, impish wrongful jabs at the rich on a everyday basis.

And let us not forget about contribution. Ayn Rand may have been a loon, but the truth of the matter is some create wealth and some do not. Those who create wealth -- of whatever kind; art, business, science, political wisdom -- are rare and deserve our protection and admiration. Those who destroy wealth, those who pilfer from the coffers of others, they deserve nothing but our contempt.

"Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal."

"Won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable!"

Would you do this if you were me?

Here's an email request from a major mainstream media reporter:

I’m working on a future series on Talk Radio. One or more of the pieces will focus on conservative talk shows so I’m looking for people who are avid conservative talk radio listeners and for the most part support the views of the radio hosts that they listen to. I read one of your blogs where you mentioned listening to Rush Limbaugh and I’d like to chat with you. (http://althouse.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-rush-limbaugh-had-to-say-about.html)

How do you picture that playing out?

What's your favorite slang expression for sexual intercourse?

Mine is in this performance:



It's not as clear there as on the original record, which I think he's lip-syncing to here. But I'm not embedding that video because it's really blurry... and because Al Green is has been seriously abused by his fashion stylist. Or do you think 1973 was such a crazy time that a man would get up in the morning and put that on? I know men like their shorts... but...

Evil giraffe...

... gets me.

"Is obsession with death a guy thing?"

Is obsession with death a bald guy thing?

Just kidding. To stave off the fear of death? Or is that not a problem for me, because I'm a girl?

Watch for the way Critchley says "love" and then sniffs. It's right at the end of the clip. That's a big clue.

Carry on.

Disorienting dinner.

The company was sublime, but, seriously, is this what you expect in a stylish-looking Mexican restaurant when you order shrimp fajitas?



And when you open the door to leave, is this what belongs on the sidewalk?



It looks more like — as one of my tablemates said — what belongs on the rim of a margarita glass. A giant's margarita glass.

Hail. It could be worse:



Shrimp can be worse too:

At the Middle/Far/Closeup Café...

... you can be as friendly or standoffish as you want.

Ooh, I'm going to lie down here!

Meade takes a photo, after invoking what Neil Young song?

Is it wrong for me to wait too long before writing about what the NYT public editor has written about why the NYT took so long to write about the ACORN story?

Somehow I, a lone blogger, feel that it is wrong for me to wait, so how absurd it feels to me that the Times, with all its resources, waited as long as it did.

You can read what the public editor, Clark Hoyt, has to say on the subject here. Note the URL. I love the way the URL generator coined the word "pubed" out of public editor. It's not a new coinage though. Urban Dictionary has already defined "pube" — usually a noun — as a verb. Definition #5:

to place a hair from the pubic male region on a piece of food to be served to a customer usually though not necessarily, by a worker of the establishment

"i was pubed last night by the guys at jj's" (past tense)

There's got to be an analogy here, but I will move back to Hoyt's gentle probing of his employer. I'll skip a lot of the details, which you either know or can read at the first link. I'll just quote a couple things I want to comment on.

Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.

Some editors told me they were not immediately aware of the Acorn videos on Fox, YouTube and a new conservative Web site called BigGovernment.com.

And Hoyt yelled "You lie!" No, he probably didn't, but come on. They had to be lying. I'd prefer to think they were lying. How could they be that out of the loop? It takes 2 seconds to glance at Drudge and Memeorandum. If you have any interest in current events, it's harder not to do than to do.

And what's with "Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire." Isn't the Times in the business of looking for facts? A great newspaper should be setting the "fires"  — breaking stories — not covering stories that other people have broken, which is what the Times was left doing with ACORN.

[O]n Sept. 16, nearly a week after the first video was posted, The Times took note of the controversy, under the headline, “Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favored Foe.”...

By stressing the politics, the article irritated more readers. “A suspicious person might see an attempt to deflect criticism of Acorn by highlighting how those pesky conservatives are at it again,” said Albert Smith of Chatham, N.J.

I thought politics was emphasized too much, at the expense of questions about an organization whose employees in city after city participated in outlandish conversations about illegal and immoral activities....

Emphasizing the politics was a way of pretending that the earlier story wasn't news fit to print. It wasn't so embarrassingly late to be talking about the politics of it all.

[The reporter Scott] Shane said he thought it was correct to approach the Acorn sting as a political story. Absent that aspect, he said, the discussion of prostitution by low-level employees was not compelling news.

Some conservatives think O’Keefe and Giles were doing work that should have been done by the mainstream media. But most news organizations consider such tactics unethical — The Times specifically prohibits reporters from misrepresenting themselves or making secret recordings. And the two were sloppy with facts.

All that may be true, but why hasn't the Times ever investigated ACORN in all these years? Why was it left to a couple of quirky amateurs to bring some light to a huge shady operation. Follow great journalistic ethics and investigate some things and bring us some facts.

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”

So you're assigning somebody to get the clues you've been too lame to pick up, and yet you don't want people to be able to send him clues because — you've got to be kidding! — he'd get too much email. Who with any level of connectedness has not learned to deal with a ton of email?! Come on. I want to just yell "bullshit!," but I'll spell it out. I get 100s of email messages every day, and it's not even my job to pick up clues. I deal with it, and it's not even that hard. You have an email address that is different from the one you use with people you know and trust, and you scan the first lines as they appear in the inbox. From that alone, you can see what's going on, and you can choose to click through to whatever you want and spend as little as half a second reading it if you are any good. Damn, if your clue-getter isn't able to do that, you might as well give up and write more stories about what middle-aged moms in Park Slope are saying about popsicles and iPhones.

And as for the desire to avoid excoriation in the blogosphere... have a nice day.

Roman Polanski is now in custody for having sex with a 45-year-old woman.

He did that that 32 years ago, when she was 13. You would think that by now it would be — if not forgotten or even forgiven — at least irrelevant. He's avoided capture for so long as he's lolled about in Europe, collecting kudos, and he's gotten so old — 76 — that it seems as though the reprehensible crime only exists in the sealed-away past.

And now that another woman — a 61-year-old woman, who, when she was 21 (not as young as 13), murdered his long-ago wife and his never-born child — has died, that other world seems impossibly distant and deceased. His victimizer Susan Atkins is dead, and the woman he victimized, Samantha Geimer, has settled with him. It might be part of the secret settlement, but Geimer does not want the old criminal charges pursued.

Nonetheless, the Swiss police arrested Roman Polanski when he touched down in Zurich to pick up another prize. Why did that happen?

"There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming," ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told The Associated Press. "That's why he was taken into custody."

Oh! There is memory, and there is law, and you cannot rise above it, not by extreme suffering or extreme old age, not by great fame or great accomplishment, and not by profuse reconciliation with the victim.

Roman Polanski has been called to account at long last.

"What makes these tweets significant is that they were written by Raju Narisetti, one of The Post’s top editors."

Shut up, little Twitter bird!

As one of two managing editors, he’s responsible for The Post's features content and oversees its Web site. But he also sits in on news meetings and occasionally gets involved in “hard” news.

Narisetti said today he now realizes that his tweets, although intended for a private audience of about 90 friends and associates, were unwise.

They were “personal” observations, he said. “But I also realize that... seeing that the managing editor of The Post is weighing in on this, it’s a clear perception problem.”

He has closed his Twitter account.

What were Narasetti's tewible tweets? Stuff like:

“We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not... But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad.”

“Sen Byrd (91) in hospital after he falls from ‘standing up too quickly.” How about term limits. Or retirement age. Or commonsense to prevail.”

He hopped on some sensitive toes. Or he expressed himself — gasp! — personally — in a medium that is all about the personal touch. But he wielded the corporate media label, and his being opinionated undercuts his corporate media function.

In today’s hyper-sensitive political environment, Narisetti’s tweets could be seen as one of The Post’s top editors taking sides on the question of whether a health-care reform plan must be budget neutral. On Byrd, his comments could be construed as favoring term limits or mandatory retirement for aging lawmakers.

Could be seen? Well, duh! His ability to ignore that (and the Post's continuing ability to toy with the possibility that he didn't express an opinion) could be construed as believing that we readers are naive and dumb.

Many readers already view The Post with suspicion and believe that the personal views of its reporters and editors influence the coverage. The tweets could provide ammunition.

Ha ha. So you were hoping to fly under the radar, but you've started to worry that we're on to you? And so, you need to take precautions. But of course, you not only have opinions, you want to take advantage of the promotion that can be wrung out of Twitter and other new media that threatens to get out in front of you. What a dilemma!

Narisetti’s decision to stop posting coincides with today’s release of new Post newsroom guidelines for using Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks.

Oh, no! The party's over! The web, for all it's wild, casual fun must be taken seriously. But I wanna run wild and free over here and still command all the authority of my profession!

The truth is, there is a price to be paid for speaking freely. You get things and you give things up. You need to think about what you want, make decisions, and deal with the consequences. I know: I — a law professor — have been doing that for years.

When Narisetti heard about the coming WaPo crackdown, he tweeted:

“For flagbearers of free speech, some newsroom execs have the weirdest double standards when it comes to censoring personal views.”

Ah, but now Narisetti has folded his wings and supports the new guidelines. Here, read them:

When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment. We never abandon the guidelines that govern the separation of news from opinion, the importance of fact and objectivity, the appropriate use of language and tone, and other hallmarks of our brand of journalism.

And I thought that even in the newspaper, items labeled "opinion" or "analysis" or whatever could range well beyond pure fact and objectivity and could get creative with language and tone. How does tweeting under an individual name break these journalistic principles?

I'm guessing that the real problem is not that we learn that the editors are real people with their own ideas and that they are not neutral to the bone. I think it's that the transparent revelation of personal opinion would allow us to see that the editors all or almost all slant in the same political direction, and that's something the newspaper would like to hide. If gulling us into thinking the paper is written by neutral editors is a journalistic principle, it's not one I care about.

The guidelines continue:

What you do on social networks should be presumed to be publicly available to anyone, even if you have created a private account. It is possible to use privacy controls online to limit access to sensitive information. But such controls are only a deterrent, not an absolute insulator. Reality is simple: If you don’t want something to be found online, don’t put it there.

That's true — so don't confess to crimes and misdemeanors — but does it refer to the expression of political opinions?

Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything – including photographs or video – that could be perceived as reflecting political racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.

That could be perceived... But, good lord, any criticism of the President is, these days, perceived as racial bias.

And shouldn't there be a comma after "political"? Maybe not, these days....

And God forbid you should show any religious bias. That means that every journalist who wants to keep his job will have to shut up about the fact that he actually believes his religion is the true one or that he thinks religion is a big lie.

Let's all be decorous little nobodies here in this newspaper we're afraid no one's going to want to read anymore.

At the Closer Look Nightclub...

... let's talk intimately.

AND: Here's the more distant view of the butterfly (moth?). [Thanks to commenter Seneca: "Butterfly. Moth antennae are fluffy."] And, from the same beautiful herb garden, a hummingbird.

ALSO: Thanks to Instapundit for linking. By the way, when my titles designate a post as a "nightclub," "café," "tavern," "restaurant," or some such place, it means you can use the topic thread to talk about anything you like. It's an open thread, so don't think anybody in there is hijacking the thread or disrespecting my photography.

AND: Chip animates my first photo:

"The need for a cheap apartment in part led Mr. Carroll home to Inwood in the summer of 2008, in spite of his history with the neighborhood."

Link.

In “The Basketball Diaries,” Mr. Carroll used the nosy old ladies on its park benches and the reactionary hard-hats in its bars as a comic foil....

[B]y the summer of 2008, his childhood address at 585 Isham Street in Inwood might have seemed like a peaceful place to write.

The focus of the ground-floor apartment was the desk, a padded cart beneath it to elevate his aching leg.

This part of the story caught my attention, because I have spent the last 4 days — post-toe-op — with my foot elevated on pillows to keep it from throbbing.

There, he plowed through plastic bins of sliced pineapple, a reward for a session of hard work.

The only decorations were a poetry event poster and a photo-triptych of Kurt Cobain. For months, boxes of books remained unpacked and the windows were bare. “He said that sometimes neighbors would smile at him, and he was just sitting there in his underwear,” [his friend Martin] Heinz recalled....

Mr. Carroll was alone the day he died. A neighbor peering into his window apparently saw him slump to the floor and called 911, [his brother Tom] said. (“Classic Inwood,” joked Tara Newman, a friend who also grew up there.)

There is reason to leave the windows bare and to live in a neighborhood of nosy people. You don't have to die alone.

The hummingbird.

Today, in Olbrich Garden.

ADDED: The man you hear saying "I've never seen anything like this" (twice) is not Meade. He's just another man visiting Olbrich Garden today. He was with the woman who said — about the bird — "He just doesn't really care about us." The man also says — in the end, when the bird returns to the branch where he started — "He's got home base." Here's a still of the bird who doesn't really care about us back at home base:

In the Bliss Café...

... could life be this beautiful?



Hmmm?

"I don't want to be seen now, because I am like a lizard. It is horrible."

"I would like some way to disappear where people don't see me any more at some point."

Of course, there is a way, and Michael Jackson found it.

Vintage Japanese matchbox labels.

japanese matchbox label, originally uploaded by maraid.

A Flickr set. Via Metafliter.

We have a president who doesn't even believe we are the good guys. True or false?

Did you hesitate? Because you shouldn't even have to hesitate.

Did you hesitate?
	No. I went right to false.
	No. I went right to true.
	Yes, but I said false.
	Yes, but I said true.
	I'm still in hesitation mode. Come on, Obama! Help me out here.
pollcode.com free polls

What are you supposed to think when you go to your local neighborhood grocery store in Madison, Wisconsin...

... and you just want some sparkling water — mineral water, club soda, seltzer, whatever — and the store has a choice of exactly one thing, and it's this...





...?

Possible thoughts:

1. Is this a crazy — possibly drug-induced — dream?

2. Oh, no, America is over!

3. Is this the Chocolate Factory?

4. Voluptuous women are pulchritudinous.

5. It has been determined: a. choice only makes people unhappy, b. best brand is Naleczowianka, and c. everyone must express delight with perfectly happy dance, like this:

"Barack Obama's amazingly consistent smile."

Barack Obama's amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who admits he does the same thing.

People who pose for a lot of pictures — successfully — develop a natural-looking, reflexive smile. Don't mock it. It's very useful. I went through most of my life feeling awkward doing photographs as if it was phony to smile when it wasn't backed up by genuine happiness or amusement. You don't have time to summon up real feeling or its simulacrum. You're not filming an Oscar performance. Just do that winning, automatic smile for the camera and save your worries about real human feeling for less artificial encounters.

The death of a census worker.

"A part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape.... The word 'fed' was written in felt-tip pen on 51-year-old Bill Sparkman's chest... 'The only thing he had on was a pair of socks... And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something.... And they even had duct tape around his neck... And they had like his identification tag on his neck. They had it duct-taped to the side of his neck, on the right side, almost on his right shoulder.' Authorities have refused to say if Sparkman was at work going to door-to-door for census surveys before he died."

Can we speculate about what happened here? If I had to guess, I'd say that Sparkman, doing his census work, encountered a criminal enterprise — perhaps a drug lab — out where people thought no one would — or should — be coming around.

"President Obama must also reaffirm that — should diplomacy fail — all options remain on the table."

The Iran sanctions bill.

Alicia de Larrocha "cultivated a poetic interpretive style in which gracefulness was prized over technical flashiness or grand, temperamental gestures."

"But her approach, combined with her small stature — she was only 4-foot-9 — was deceptive: early in her career she played all the big Romantic concertos, including those of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, and she could produce a surprisingly large, beautifully sculptured sound. Even so, it was in music that demanded focus, compactness and subtle coloristic breadth that Ms. de Larrocha excelled."

RIP.

It was a theme day on the blog today.

Did you notice?

"If the cow had the cognitive ability to form thought and speak, would it say, 'Where’s the milk? I’m not getting any milk.'"

What the judge said, explaining why he was dismissing animal cruelty charges brought against a police officer — Robert Melia Jr — who induced 5 calves to suck on his penis.

[Judge James J.] Morley went on to explain that children are comforted by pacifiers and perhaps cows are equally pacified by police officers in these cases: “They [children] enjoy the act of suckling,” the judge said. “Cows may be of a different disposition.” You are allowed to throw up in disgust at this point.

Morley ignored that one cow head-butted Melia in the stomach and appeared far from happy. The prosecutor objected that the cows were “very upset” by Melia’s action and stated “I think any reasonable juror could infer that a man’s penis in the mouth of a calf is torment. It’s a crime against nature.” The problem is that New Jersey does not currently have a ban on bestiality as opposed to animal cruelty.

If New Jersey wants to prosecute people for this kind of behavior, it has to have the appropriate statute on the books. What Melia did with animals may be disgusting, but it is more disgusting to convict human beings of crimes they have not committed.

Andrew Sullivan presents — without cynicism — Bill Clinton's explanation of why he's now for same-sex marriage.

And the explanation is a big, verbose mush:

I think, what made me change my mind, I looked up and said look at all of this stuff you’re for. I’ve always believed that—I’ve never supported all the moves of a few years ago to ban gay couples from adoption. Because they’re all these kids out there looking for a home.... So I said, you know, I realized that I was over 60 years old, I grew up at a different time, and I was hung up about the word. I had all these gay friends, I had all these gay couple friends, and I was hung up about it. And I decided I was wrong.

That our society has an interest in coherence and strength and commitment and mutually reinforcing loyalties, then if gay couples want to call their union marriage and a state agrees, and several have now, or a religious body will sanction it, and I don’t think a state should be able to stop a religious body from saying it, I don’t think the rest of us should get in the way of it. I think it’s a good thing not a bad thing. And I just realized that, I was, probably for, maybe just because of my age and the way I’ve grown up, I was wrong about that. I just had too many gay friends. I saw their relationships. I just decided I couldn’t, I had an untenable position.

Clinton is a master blabber, but what did he say? He's not even for a right to marry, only for leaving it up to the states: "if gay couples want to call their union marriage and a state agrees...." He's only implicitly admitting that the Defense of Marriage Act — which he signed — was wrong. He doesn't even apologize for what he did back when he had actual power to do something. He's presenting it all as a personal journey of his. He's older and wiser. Bleh!

Clinton signed DOMA when he thought it was in his political interest, and I suspect he thinks it's in his political interest now to embrace same-sex marriage. I can understand Sullivan enthusing over whatever high-level support he gets for his big cause, but I would find him a much more interesting writer if he would shine a sharp, critical light on everything.

"Matthew McConaughey Cannot Stand Up By Himself."

Ha.

"I just can’t take it any more" — shouted in Arabic by Gaddafi's translator.

75 minutes into the nonsense.

"He’s not exactly the most lucid speaker," another Arabic interpreter said. "It’s not just that what he’s saying is illogical, but the way he’s saying it is bizarre. However, I think I could have made him sound a lot better."

"It was less risky to have a useless poll than one that actually measured where health care stands with voters."

Mickey Kaus channels paranoia.

"People laugh at metal detectorists. I've had people go past and go, 'Beep, beep, he’s after pennies.' Well no, we're out there to find this kind of stuff, and it is out there."

Terry Herbert, the greatest detectorist of them all.

Since the July day when his detector picked up traces of the hoard beneath a field in Staffordshire, a Midlands county that was at the center of the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, Mr. Herbert said, he has been seeing piles of gold in his sleep. Awake, he has quietly celebrated his triumph over all the people who mocked him in the years when a typical day’s finds amounted to little but scrap....

He said that on the day of his discovery he reworked a mantra that he regularly used for good luck. “I have this phrase that I say sometimes — ‘Spirits of yesterday, take me where the coins appear’ — but on that day I changed ‘coins’ to ‘gold.’ I don’t know why I said it that day, but I think somebody was listening.”

Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz, who are you?

I'm seeing that name, I think, for the first time, in the obituary of the repellent murderess, Susan Atkins. (It was Atkins who boasted that she "stabbed [Sharon] Tate, tasted her blood and used the blood to write the word 'Pig' on the front door of the house.")

In 1968, Ms. Atkins gave birth to a son. [Charles] Manson — who by all accounts was not the father — had her name the child Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. While he was still a baby, the child was removed from Ms. Atkins’s care and later adopted.

Manson had already given Atkins the name Sadie Mae Glutz. I wonder if the (renamed) Zezozose Zadfrack ever got it into his head to go searching for his biological parents, the way adoptees so often do. I hope not. But surely, there are men born in 1968, who know they were adopted, who have stopped to wonder if they are Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. Do you ever look in the mirror and think you're rather cute, but maybe you're cute like this?

"Respect the vision of Frank Lloyd Wright and look to the future and forget the towers.”

Do you know about the Lamp House? What do you think of this proposal to raze the surrounding buildings and construct a giant glass box all around it?

Brenda Konkel champions the buildings slated for destruction:

[She] said what makes the Lamp House charming is the fact that it’s surrounded by other historic homes, in a largely intact historic neighborhood. “Coming in and tearing out six houses just destroys the neighborhood,” she said. “Moving the Lamp House is insane. Part of what’s special about the Lamp House is that it was put in the middle of the block on purpose.”

Here's her blog post showing those other houses, which are really ordinary. But I guess that's the idea. The Lamp House looks distinctive because of the contrast to the other old residences. Putting all that new glass around it would create a completely different effect.

But is that so wrong? I'm thinking of the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. Yes, it's radically out of context, but that's what museums always do to things. The real question is whether the recontextualization is good.

Master theorizer Malcolm Gladwell is highly successful at seduction.

But if he's got a theory about why, he's sure not explaining it to Sean Macaulay.

"Save the Boobs" — it's a breast cancer public service announcement, so you can't complain?

First, here's the PSA:



And here's a "making of" background video:



Here's Dan Neil writing about it in the L.A. Times:

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and a new crop of public service announcements leverage male lechery to an astonishing degree. The latest and greatest is a spot called "Save the Boobs," from the Rethink Breast Cancer charity...

If this were a Budweiser commercial, the bluestockings, psalm singers and family focusers would be going completely mental, but in this case the morals police have no grounds to object unless they want to come off as somehow pro-breast cancer.

No grounds? If you have one good cause, it's supposed to be perfectly okay to undercut other causes? And why does Neil imagine the opposition to sexist advertising as coming only from bluestockings, psalm singers and family focusers? Is feminism in such deep eclipse?

In recent years, the increasing frankness of breast cancer PSAs has been a bright spot of adult sensibility in what is Americans' generally neurotic relationship to the female anatomy....

Well, I would have thought that feminist critique is adult and is (or at least can be) non-neurotic. But Neil does get around to talking about feminism:

Feminist film theory has a name for the camera's eye here: The "male gaze," which is to say, the camera's view is that of the male spectator and unseen protagonist regarding the female as an object (cf. Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"). This is the camera's-eye of pornography and it's inherently misogynistic. The "Save the Boobs" spot spoofs the male gaze and turns it into something positive.

So it escapes the misogyny charge because it's got a good cause or because it's a spoof? Those are 2 different things. And yet, as a matter of feminism, I don't think either good cause or spoof gets you off the hook.

"Mr. Obama is teasing Mrs. Obama. 'You’re standing on the wrong side of me.'"

"She moves to his other side. He says, 'I’m just teasing.' She stares straight ahead with a smile."

Oh? What kind of smile?

"Hello, Mr. President we honor you today! For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say 'hooray!'"

All right, now, I'm really outraged. It's one thing to lead the little children to sing the praises of our leader. It's quite another to make them learn lines like that.

***

If you think "doth" is funny, listen to the David Sedaris segment of "The Drama Bug" episode of "This American Life."

The Honda u3x 02.

Way less dorky than a Segway, no?

It's so easy to get rid of Obama People.

Yosi Sargent bows out.

I wonder what it would take to get Obama to resign. Probably not all that much.

"President Obama yesterday did his best impression of a high-school sophomore participating in his first Model UN meeting, retailing pious clichés he learned from his pony-tailed social studies teacher."

Rich Lowry talks about Barack Obama's U.N. speech.

Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation's pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?...

"For those who question the character and cause of my nation," Obama said, "I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." In other words, he's the redeemer of a nation....

Ugh. Sigh. And I thought Gaddafy was the clown. But that was yesterday, as I watched TV with the sound off, under the influence of post-toe-op drugs.

I'm torn. I was just thinking that Obama would have been so much better if he had made foreign policy the centerpiece of his presidency instead of perversely investing his reputation in complicated health care puzzles. Now, I'm thinking perhaps we're better off that he's gotten hopelessly distracted by insoluable insurance problems.

***

You know, Lowry's description made me think of Mr. Van Driessen on "Beavis and Butt-Head." I was going to embed some apt video clip of the hippie teacher — maybe something with him lecturing the boys about world peace — but all I could find was this and my inner Nancy Pelosi scolded me about this balance between freedom and safety.

Senator Kirk.

Replacing Senator Kennedy.

... Mr. Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, and his sons, Edward M. Kennedy Jr. and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, had urged Mr. Patrick to appoint Mr. Kirk, who worked for Senator Kennedy in the 1970s, and later served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee....

Mr. Kirk, 71, is chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston. Several friends and associates described him as low-key and laconic, a shrewd political strategist who could have run for office himself but decided he preferred a behind-the-scenes role.

Who should play Gaddafi?

Some amusingly close matches.

Zazie/Zazi.

Zazie, the cutest ever girl in film:



Zazi:

Najibullah Zazi, one of three men held in U.S. terror probe, indicted for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

Another boring Democratic loser calls criticism of Obama racist.

"I don't want to pick a person, say, he's a racist, but I do think the way they're piling on Obama, the harshness, you kind of feel it. I think I see an edge in them that's a little bit different and a little harsher than I've seen in other times."

This time it's Walter Mondale, and you've got to at least give him credit for speaking in the most mealy-mouthed and boring way possible.

Jeez, I almost feel like calling it mush from the wimp.

Do we want a wall of separation between religion and news?

Amazing video of a little girl not getting hit by a car:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Via Boing Boing, where the commenters express revulsion at the newscaster's reference to a "guardian angel."

Do we want a wall of separation between religion and news?

When it comes to the 3 aspects of softness — surface smoothness, bulky feel, and drapability — we love our old-growth toilet paper.

"It's unbelievable that this global treasure of Canadian boreal forests is being turned into toilet paper. . . . I think every reasonable person would have trouble understanding how that would be okay."

When Axelrod starts yammering inapt polysyllabic "e" words, you know he's lying.

"That is not endemic to the kind of reforms that we are proposing... We're not into symbolic expedition here."

That really jumped out at me, from an interview with Wolf Blitzer, who asked Axelrod to explain why health care reform can't permit private insurers to sell their policies across state lines:

AXELROD: Because we are trying to do this in a way that advances the interests of consumers without creating such disruption that it makes it difficult to --

BLITZER: Why would that be disruptive if Blue Cross and Blue Shield or United Health Care or all these big insurance companies, they don't have to worry about just working in a state, they could just have the opportunity to compete in all 50 states.

AXELROD: But insurance is regulated at this time --

BLITZER: But you could change that --

AXELROD: State by state.

BLITZER: The president could propose a law changing that.

AXELROD: That is not endemic to the kind of reforms that we are proposing or that --

BLITZER: Why not, why not?

AXELROD: We're proposing a package that we believe will bring that stability and security to people, will help people get insurance, and will lower the cost impact and pass the Congress. And that has to be the test. We're not into symbolic expedition here.

What a strange way to talk. And what a good question from Blitzer.

What's so bad about hypocrisy?

"Does it matter how much salt Mayor Bloomberg puts on his food?... It reminds me of how people love to point out that Al Gore and Thomas Friedman don't do the best job of minimizing their own carbon emissions."

"A Rather Depressing Gallery of Fat Superheroes."

Here.

Wait. This doesn't depress me:

That completely cheered me up! I'm really happy about Big-Hair/Big-Everything Wonder Woman.

***

And I like that whole blog, Unreality. For example, check out "15 Music Album Cover Replacements to Match the Title."

Oops!

No sooner do I knock the NYT than I see I'm in it!

Scanning the NYT for something to blog, I said "Has the mainstream news become less substantial?"

On the assumption that my subjective feeling is correct, I want to ask why. A few ideas:

1. They're losing readers, and they think they are losing readers to softer media and it will help to soften up.

2. They're losing money, and they've cut back, so what we're seeing is filler.

3. They know their readership is largely female, and they think fluffier stuff is what women want.

4. They just love Barack Obama so darned much that they want lots of comfy newspaper-upholstery for him to loll about on.

"Oh Millard Fillmore/You're like Happy Gilmore/We all should chill more/Like Millard Fillmore..."

Composed by Seven Machos in the "School kids learn to praise Obama" post after Peter Hoh said:

The teacher(s) only get a pass if they were working on a song that included the names of all the presidents, with student composers suggesting verses for each.

And Miller said "kinda like '50 Nifty United States'," causing Seven to snark, "It's 57. Up your game!"

And Peter continues to serve up moderation:

Until I get proof that these are not some Freeper spawn doing a satiric skit, "Public School in the Age of Obama," then I'm going to have to assume that they are plants.

Yes, we won't be fooled again. Remember when this faked us out?



Some things are just too good/bad to be true.

"Those durned climate models."

"Hey, its sorta like those durned economic models! Alan Greenspan belatedly acknowledged the now brutally apparent shortcomings of our computer-driven economic models.... Quick! Let's ram through some economically devastating (but state empowering) climate legislation before the science catches up with the hysteria!"

Sotomayor and baseball (and Brad Snyder).

On the occasion of Sonia Sotomayor's throwing out the first pitch at a Yankee game, Tony Mauro talks to my colleague Brad Snyder:

The University of Wisconsin Law School professor has written extensively about the long relationship between the Supreme Court and baseball, and he already thinks Sotomayor is "the most important federal judge in the history of baseball besides Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis." Sotomayor's 1995 ruling as a federal district court judge ending the baseball strike...

Judge Landis... was the first federal judge to become known as having "saved baseball," back in 1915. The Federal League had filed an antitrust challenge to Major League baseball, claiming it was a huge illegal trust. Knowing it was a hot potato, Landis sat on the case without acting on it until the Federal League folded. Landis then became baseball commissioner. "Justice Sotomayor is a much better judge than Judge Landis," said Snyder.

And here, you can buy Brad's excellent books: "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball" and "A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports."

Somewhere in New Jersey: School kids learn to praise Obama.

Via Drudge ("SHOCK VIDEO").

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH asks:

Can anyone explain the difference between how are these children are being used to elevate Obama and the Robotic Floor Tiles in the previous post?

UPDATE: More info on the school and the reason for the performance:

[T]he superintendent of Burlington Township schools says [it] was held in February as part of Black History Month "to honor the contributions of African Americans to our country."

But Andrea Ciemnolonski, the parent of another one of the students in the video, said the song was part of a second-grade project on a variety of topics related to the month of February, such as Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day and Presidents Day....

"Alteredbeat," the YouTube user who posted the video on the Internet, told FOXNews.com that the video was first put online by Charisse Carney-Nunes, an activist and author of the children's book "I Am Barack Obama," which her Web site says "allows children to see themselves through the inspirational story of President Obama." Carney-Nunes has been promoting the book during visits to schools on the east coast.

It seems that it's easy (and dangerous) to confuse the typical inspirational stories used to celebrate Black History with Obama's present-day political power.

Robot Floor Tiles — an infinite walkway.

Amazing but practically useless, from Hiroo Iwata, of the University of Tsukuba.

The video is pretty cool, but the voiceover is in Japanese: